


the stories that shape history

by gone_girl



Series: the last great pirate king [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:48:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24693283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gone_girl/pseuds/gone_girl
Summary: Here is how the story goes: Long John Silver, pirate king, consort to Princess Madi and partner to Captain Flint, turned traitor.
Relationships: Madi/John Silver
Series: the last great pirate king [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1794574
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	the stories that shape history

Here is how the story goes: Long John Silver, pirate king, consort to Princess Madi and partner to Captain Flint, turned traitor. He killed Captain Flint and conspired with Princess Madi’s opponents, stealing power out from under her and limiting her rule to her shores.

That is the story. It is too close to the truth for Madi to deny, and too far from it for her to accept.

In the days after the treaty is signed, the chiefs and captains visit her, one by one. Some of them are resentful, some are understanding, some are angry, some are disappointed. One, an old man with one shot out eye, takes her hand in both of his fragile ones and tells her gently, earnestly, “We would have followed you.”

And then they leave. They pile their men onto their ships and set sail, one after another, black banners and homemade ships disappearing onto the horizon. Madi’s people settle back into their life. It is not the same. There are brothers, cousins, uncles, fathers missing now, countless warriors, endless gaps in a peaceful life. But it is, nonetheless, peaceful. People come to her now with the same reasons they used to have. Property disputes, marriage officiations, supply shortages. 

It makes Madi want to scream.

She wonders, sometimes, if she’s insane. If an entire war effort could be defused so quickly, how could she ever have felt such fire?

Julius comes to her, many times. He’s an advisor of sorts now, by her mother’s decision. He reminds her that this island is already a revolutionary effort. That their existence is itself an affront to the empire. That they, through power and sheer force of will, forced the greatest military in the world to cede an island. To cede them a few decades peace, where before there was none.

He’s right. She hates that he’s right. 

Sooner or later, there is only one foreign ship left, floating offshore like an omen. The battered old  _ Walrus.  _ Her crew loves the island, mingles quite easily with Madi’s people, save one. Silver stays alone on that cliff each day, where he once learned from his partner how best to defeat him. When Madi makes up her mind, makes her way up the cliff to go see him, she despises the hope in Silver’s expression as he turns to face her. Despises herself for wanting to give in to it.

The  _ Walrus  _ sets sail two days later, her crew a mix of Silver’s men and Madi’s. With Nassau in sight, Madi calls the men to the deck.

“When Long John Silver steps foot in Nassau, he will no longer be welcome on this ship or on my island,” she announces. “You may choose to follow him, or you may choose to stay with me. Know only that should you follow him, you will cease to be any subject of mine.” The words are clipped, necessarily said with no more emotion than she would offer a piece of driftwood. She makes the mistake of looking at Silver, seeing his wide eyes, the whitening of his knuckles against his crutch.

Later, in the captain’s cabin, Madi sits, making preparations for her tasks in Nassau. Silver enters without knocking.

“Madi,” he says.

“Silver,” she returns.

“Look at me.”

The pen freezes in her hand, and almost unbidden to her, her gaze lifts to meet his. His handsome face has become gaunt. For the first time since Madi has known him, he is fidgeting, revealing his uncertainty. But for all he doesn’t look like himself, he looks exactly like himself. Madi can still see the bright eyes, the clever mouth that drew her in the first place, that still draw her. He looks at her, and she remembers how his steady hands held her with such gentleness, such love and care. Never before- and not since- has Madi felt a devotion that allows her to soften, instead of one that demands her to strengthen.

So she softened for him. And that clever mouth she loved so much betrayed her.

“I told you I would wait,” Silver says now. “And I will.”

“The value of your word, however poor, is no longer my concern,” Madi says. “My island is no longer home to you.” I am no longer home to you.

Silver’s face twists in pain, and it takes all the strength in her body to school herself into indifference.

She returns to her work without waiting to watch him leave. After what feels like an endless minute, he does.

The ship reaches Nassau. Silver takes the first longboat in, with about a third of the men on the crew following him.

Nassau is a different place. Civilized. Madi swallows her disgust as she winds her way through town to meet with Max.

The terms, this time, are of her own making, and they do not bear England’s seal. They state an intent to carry on the account (“I know there are still a few ships on which it lives,” Madi says pointedly, and Max smiles), and to use it to supply the island. The prizes that do not directly supply the island will be traded and sold in Nassau at a discount, in exchange for Max’s aid in helping those enslaved that pass through Nassau escape to safety.

“This does not follow the treaty,” Max notes.

“No, it does not,” Madi says.

Max watches her steadily, before taking her pen and scratching out a line. “No discount,” she says. “I will buy your goods at full price.” At the bottom of the paper, she signs her name.

Madi sets sail a week later. The ship has been refurbished, the ranks of her crew filled out. 

When they happen upon a merchant ship, Madi raises Flint’s banner.

A new story takes hold of the New World. A ship prowls the waters under Captain Flint’s banner and Princess Madi’s command, her crew gleeful, her captain equally ruthless but unsmiling. As the years pass, Princess Madi’s fleet grows to rival Blackbeard’s. She is the most feared pirate of the high seas, the last great pirate king. Her kingdom, nestled on an island not on any map, grows thick and strong with the blood of empire. It is a safe haven, a seat of love and life and revolution. Princess Madi nurtures it, but never eats from its fruit. 

Her fleet, nine strong now, is spread out over a few miles. They are making their lazy way home, stuffed to the hull with goods and gifts. Madi is on the deck, enjoying the mild weather and crisp wind. The years of spending more time rocking with a ship than on steady land has taught her to love the sea. The rage that burns low and deep inside her is comfortable, after so long, no longer harsh. Like watching the sun glow from ten feet underwater.

“Sails!”

Madi glances up. “What kind of ship?” she calls up. “Do we need to send out for the  _ Damnation _ ?”

“No,” the lookout shouts. “It’s small. We could take her, easily.”

“Let’s take her then,” Madi says, to cheers. Frankly, she’s surprised they even have the energy, the way they’d gone completely off the deep end with drink and whores in Nassau, but it’s not even as if these things very often end in bloodshed anymore. The moment she raises that ragged, horrifying banner, most ships surrender.

This one is different. They raise the banner, and it raises one in return. 

The quartermaster laughs delightedly. “Let’s have a chat with them,” he says. “Perhaps unload a few of those books Max didn’t want to buy.”

“I didn’t want to sell,” Madi corrects. 

The quartermaster is ignoring her, sending a longboat with a white flag across the gap between the ships. Before long, the  _ Atlas  _ is flush with the  _ Walrus _ , hooks thrown across, laughing pirates splashing rum down from the masts. The sun is setting, and Madi can already tell it will be a night of joy and debauchery. She mutters to the quartermaster to keep everybody above deck, away from their precious cargo. She is about to retreat to her cabin when she sees someone standing on the other ship. The stance is familiar enough that she’s groping for her glass, her hands shaking as she focuses it.

Based on the way Silver is standing fixed to the spot, he already knows who has tied his ship down. Madi lowers the glass, her heart racing. “Kofi,” she says. It isn’t loud, but her crew is obedient and always listening, and before long Kofi has materialized at her side.

“Princess,” he says. “What is it?”

“Fetch their captain for me,” Madi says before she even knows that she wants to see him. “Now.”

This is how, after years and years, Silver stands with Madi in her cabin, as the ship shakes with the laughter of drunken pirates.

He’s older. His hair is longer. The years have worn lines into that face she once loved so dearly, and his eyes, once so bright, are dull. He stands before her silently. She knows he is drinking in the sight of her, as she is him. Neither of them speak for long minutes at a time, and it is as Madi realizes that he won’t speak until she does that she realizes she doesn’t know him as well as she once did.

“Long John Silver,” she says.

“Don’t call me that,” he says. His voice is harsh.

“Silver,” she says instead, and his eyes droop shut for a moment.

“You are so different,” Silver says. She realizes that the harshness of his voice wasn’t hostility. It is just how he sounds, now.

“As are you,” Madi replies, and for the first time, she realizes that her own voice, too, has become lower and harsher. 

They are almost strangers now.

“The stories about you are horrible,” Silver says.

“I don’t care,” Madi says.

Silver smiles mirthlessly but says nothing.

“My people see me as I am,” Madi says. “Theirs are the only stories that matter.”

Silver bows his head, as if making a concession. Without being asked, he sinks into the chair before her desk, propping his crutch against it.

“I wonder if this was not the natural end of it all,” Silver says. “That even if I had not done what I did, it always was going to be you, ruling these seas and bringing prosperity through war.”

Madi sinks into her chair, watching him. She notices a gray strand, curling past his temple.

“Flint is alive,” Silver says.

She didn’t believe him. But she stormed the plantation years ago. Three of the men still sail with her. They confirmed that Thomas Hamilton was imprisoned there for years, until a man with a shaved head and hard green eyes named James came and took him away.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Madi says.

Silver looks at her, sharp surprise stealing through his expression.

“You aren’t sorry,” Madi says. “Are you.”

“How can I be?” Silver asks. “You are queen of an entire sea. Flint is living out his days in peace. That is all I wanted.”

“Do you still wait for me?”

Something like hope lifts Silver’s heavy brow. “Forever,” he says.

Madi thinks about what she must look like to him. She is stronger now, and older, and marked with scars from years of fighting. She must be a reflection of all those horrible stories. He himself looks every inch Long John Silver. 

How can they truly be strangers, when they made each other?

The story that is remembered by the empire is bloody, Godless, Godly. But the story told outside of the bounds of civilization, in maroon communities, on pirate ships, whispered on the fringes of Nassau, is a reverent one. The Queen Mother abdicates fifteen years after the almost-revolution of the West Indies. Princess Madi returns home with a fleet of twelve ships, and a community of thousands attends her coronation. Queen Madi is not a gentle leader, but she is a loved one, and one that loves her people. The fleet continues to bleed the empire, flying a banner that strikes fear into the heart of the King, multiplying and raiding under the oversight of Queen Madi. Long John Silver never steps foot into her kingdom again, but is part of her story in his own right. Queen Madi dies surrounded by a husband, a child, and a thriving city. No one quite knows when Long John Silver dies. It is said, sometimes, that he continues to rove the sea, that his bloodlust outstrips the just Queen’s, that he has been waiting days, months, years, for… well. For what Long John Silver waits, the stories never are quite able to explain.


End file.
